String Quartet in C major, Op.61

“I see in the papers,” wrote Dvorák in November 1881, “that on 15th December Hellmesberger is to perform my new Quartet, which does not yet exist! There is nothing left for me to do but compose it.” Actually the situation was not quite as critical as he pretended. Joseph Hellmesberger, leader of the most respected string quartet in Vienna, had already written to Dvorák to remind him of his obligation and Dvorák had replied that he was, in fact, working on his opera Dimitrij in the mornings and the Quartet in the afternoons: “The dear Lord will whisper a few melodies to me,” he said. If he had fallen behind it was because he had discarded the original first movement (an Allegro vivace in F major) and had started again. Ironically, although the work was finished on time, the scheduled first performance did not take place because a fire at the Ringtheater - from which Hellmesberger and his son, who conducted there, had narrowly escaped with their lives - had seriously disrupted Viennese musical life. The first performance of the Quartet in C major was given by the Joachim Quartet in Berlin a year later.

The fact that the commission came from Vienna seems to have been a decisive factor in determining the stylistic identity of the work. Dvorák’s previous Quartet (in E flat major, Op.51) had been written to a commission for a score that would be specifically “Slavonic” in character. Vienna, he must have felt, would prefer something more sophisticated in style. So the first theme whispered to the composer working on the first movement, though distinctive Dvorák, is of a classical cut and entirely appropriate to the searching sonata-form treatment he applies it and its much less prominent second-subject companion. The beautifully scored slow movement is abundant in romantic melody which, while not specifically Bohemian in character, is intimately personal in effect. By referring back to the first movement for the main theme of the Scherzo Dvorák avoids local colour at least until the comparatively folky trio section, although it is not until the Finale that he definitively releases the Bohemian in him.

Gerald Larner©2003